The æsthetic movement indicated the restlessness of some of the brighter spirits with this condition, but many of its remedies were worse than the disease. The _nouveau_ artist-craftsman stood less chance than anybody of getting back to the secret of noble things, having forsaken the path of pure utility which, wherever it may go for a time, always leads back again to beauty. The disappearance of beauty for a time need not have been a cause of despair. Beauty will always come back if it is left alone. People had been swept off their feet with delight at what machinery could do, and they expected beauty to come out of it as a product at the same pace as everything else. It was not a mistake to expect it from any source, but from this particular source it could only come with time. There is evidence that it is on the way. And yet though the results of crude mechanical industrialism spoilt the outward appearance of the whole of the Victorian age, the earlier part at least of that time was one of marked personal refinement. We have but to look at portraits by George Richmond and others to receive a great impression of distinction. And this fact enables us to throw into clearer light the exact nature of du Maurier's work. If we seek for evidence in the old volumes of _Punch_ for the distinction of the early Victorians we shall not find it. We shall merely conceive instead a dislike for the type of gentleman of the time. Leech and his contemporaries did nothing more for their age than to make it look ridiculous for ever. But du Maurier gives us a real impression of the Society in which he moved. His ability to satirise society while still leaving it its dignity is unique. It may be said to be his distinctive contribution to the art of graphic satire. It gave to the Anglo-Saxon school its present-day characteristic, putting upon one of the very lightest forms of art the stamp of a noble time. The point is that whilst du Maurier thus deferred to the dignity of human nature he remained a satirist, not a humorist merely, as was Keene. [Illustration] II THE ART OF DU MAURIER § 1 If we wish to estimate the art of du Maurier at its full worth we must try and imagine _Punch_ from 1863 without this art, and try for a moment to conceive the difference this absence would make to our own present knowledge of the Victorians; also to the picture always entertained of England abroad. If we are to believe du Maurier's art England is a petticoat-governed country. The men in his pictures are often made to recede into the background of Victorian ornament merely as ornaments themselves. As for the women, the mask of manner, the pleasantness concealing every shade of uncharitableness, all the arts of the contention for social precedence--in the interpretation of this sort of thing du Maurier is often quite uncanny, but he is never ruthless.